


CURRENCY IN KIRKWALL

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the Dragon Age 2 Kinkmeme long ago, there was a prompt for Carver messing up a job and M!Hawke taking the punishment instead. This is sort of for that, and sort of for choowy. That first year in Kirkwall, through Carver's eyes. <i>If Meeran works them to the bone, has them running from Lowtown to Hightown and back again like he’s training his own personal slaves—if he keeps them both waiting down by the docks until dawn for a mysterious shipment that never comes, or following half-imagined enemies all the way to Sundermount with no increase in pay—then it’s because Carver picked him, and the burden’s his to accept, his to maintain.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	CURRENCY IN KIRKWALL

Garrett wants to work for Athenril because, for whatever reason, he finds her attractive. ‘Bewitching’ is the word he uses; ‘Rude,’ says Carver, since that’s what she _really_ is. But Carver throws his lot in with Meeran, who isn’t an elf looking slant-eyed in his brother’s direction, and for the first time, his brother actually listens to him.

‘Have it your way,’ Garrett says with a sigh, though Aveline doesn’t seem that happy about it.

She doesn’t have to be. She isn’t a Hawke, anyway.

*

After that, Carver has to like it. Maybe that’s why Garrett gave in so easy.

If Meeran works them to the bone, has them running from Lowtown to Hightown and back again like he’s training his own personal slaves—if he keeps them both waiting down by the docks until dawn for a mysterious shipment that never comes, or following half-imagined enemies all the way to Sundermount with no increase in pay—then it’s because Carver picked him, and the burden’s his to accept, his to maintain.

 _Well done, Carver_ , he thinks, with the suspicion that Garrett knew it from the beginning, and planned it this way.

That’s his brother all over. Never wanting to take the blame.

In the mornings he’s always up before Carver even cracks an eye open, rustling awake to the sight of Garrett shoving his boots on in the dark. There aren’t any windows in their hovel, no soft dawn light slanting gray across the floorboards so they don’t stub their toes on a rusty nail. When Garrett lights a soft flame in the palm of his hand and holds it aloft to comb his hair by, Carver tackles him, hissing, ‘ _Don’t,_ ’ and ‘Who’re you trying to _impress,_ anyway?’

*

The Red Irons all have tattoos; Meeran tugs the laces of his jerkin free and shows them where his is hiding late one night in a taproom too piss-poor to even be the _Hanged Man’s_ brand of disgusting.

‘Carver has a tattoo, too,’ Garrett says, ‘don’t you, Carver? He can make it bark and everything.’

It’s not the first time Carver’s seen his brother drunk this way, bone-tired and dead on his feet already. It’s not the first time he’s hated him for it, either. But it _is_ the first time in Kirkwall, when the Carta and the Coterie are just starting to know his name—that vengeful spirit in the dead of night who singes their purse strings clean through the weave and leaves no trace behind.

 _Yet._

Carver supposes there are some people who can drink and eat and be merry in a place as rank as this, in such a dire city, but he only ever wears a smile to prove a point—that Meeran and the Red Irons were somehow the right choice.

*

None of the bloody Hawke apostates know when to stand back and let someone with a sword do all their dirty work for them. A mage’s place is behind a phalanx; they’re delicate creatures, even the strong ones with broad shoulders and cracked palms and insufferable facial hair.

For dwarves, the members of the Carta move quickly. The Coterie’s faster, generally, but they pack less of a punch. Carver hates the backstabs most of all, the puff of smoke and the oil-slicks left in their wake, the traps blooming hot through the air with a rush of fire when a clumsy boot trips the wire from its resting place.

Afterward, Garrett always has the audacity to heal him first, as though he still thinks Carver might believe he’s invincible.

But those days are long past. When Garrett stands straight, the crown of his head only reaches Carver’s chin.

‘I’m not stupid,’ Carver says, shrugging him off, an elbow to his gut.

Garrett grins, weary but so damn sure of himself, wiping dwarven blood off the side of his face. ‘You aren’t?’ he asks. ‘You could have fooled me.’

So Carver grabs his arm and twists it, hard enough to make him grunt, to make him _see_ —or feel, at least—the torn flesh and muscle in his shoulder-blade, where the dagger sunk in deep.

He might have been young, once, but he was never _blind._

*

Running for mercenaries, Carver tells himself, is the same as running for a lieutenant in the army. It’s the same as running _from_ the darkspawn, too, all the way back home with his tail tucked between his legs like a wounded mabari. He expected Garrett to say something first, to draw the comparison, to look smug with one hand on his noble hound’s head. But he stood behind Mother instead while she cried in relief, with his arms folded over his chest and his staff far away—like magic was that easy to put aside.

Carver should be better at it than Garrett, because he knows Meeran’s men already, their blunt hands and their blunter words, the crude jokes and the creak of the grease in their leather armor. _They_ should have been worse than the men he knew and fought alongside, but in the end they’re all hired hands, _conscripted_ for a cause they don’t believe in, and some are quicker to dissemble than others, hiding a gem or a lyrium vein, squirreling away profit piece by piece.

But Garrett catches them all at their wicked games, loops their purse strings with the end of his staff, and reclaims what Meeran’s sharp eyes would notice first-thing was missing.

‘You won’t make any friends that way,’ Carver mutters, because he knows these men already, and he knows where this road will lead.

‘Nor any extra coin,’ Garrett agrees, ‘but plenty of enemies, which I hear is a sort of currency. In Kirkwall, anyway.’

*

Now and then they race a few of Athenril’s men to the finish for a handsome chest or a lockbox full of letters with unbroken Orlesian seals.

Garrett never loses. For some men, the drive makes them too hungry to win, but not Carver’s brother.

He’s special like that.

‘It’s a personal thing,’ he tells Meeran, handing over the private documents, and Meeran pats him on the shoulder, claps him on the arm, calls him _good lad_ with a friendly leer, with that gray patch on his cheek that needs closer shaving.

*

Six months in and they’re halfway there; ‘Halfway finished,’ Garrett says, with a jaunt in his step to match springtime. But Carver can only see what they’ve halfway done already: each open lock and broken window, each blistered scar where smooth skin should be.

Garrett’s better at pretending; Carver assumes it’s for Mother’s sake. But one night, thoroughly plastered in their after hours, Garrett leans close and admits, breath stinking, it’s all for _Gamlen._ ‘Burns his arse,’ Garrett says, ‘to think we aren’t even suffering.’

*

Garrett learns to pick locks, the only mage who’d bothered, because he didn’t like working with anyone else. Sometimes they have Aveline along with them, but she’s difficult, looming over them like an ogre with a frown that’s purely Mother.

Not wanting her involved is the only thing Garrett and Carver find it in their hearts to agree on.

‘She’s even worse than you are,’ Garrett says, ‘when it comes to following the rules.’

Carver never believes it’s _all right_ that the people who obey the law instead of their own selfish whims should profit from their attitudes, but Garrett’s a prime example of _why_ they do. For him, every day is Feastday, and—for good or ill—every man in Lowtown knows his name when he passes by.

‘Whores are famous around these parts too, you know,’ Gamlen sneers, swaying in place, steadying himself on the correspondence table.

Carver only holds back when he realized the mabari’s brindled jowls are bristling too—and his brother already has one guard dog too many.

*

They take a job no one else wants to touch; that’s always the way. If Garrett learns about an orphaned thing his eyes light up, deep brown, like the dregs of warm whiskey. Carver finds them crouched in the sewers soon after, waiting for cutthroat smugglers who were stupid enough and clever enough time to cheat Meeran of his cut in the equation.

Some people avoid trouble, but not the Hawkes. They simply lurk in the shadows, waiting for trouble to pass their way.

Then, they rain fire down on it.

Carver’s used to dodging each burst of guttering flame, not quick enough to out-step a backstab but just quick enough to dance through a firestorm cast by his brother’s staff. The heat shimmers orange along the edge of his blade, all the way down the notched shaft, and singed the toes of his boots, the collar of his jerkin, the short hairs at the back of his neck. He’s got a complexion that burns easy, and Garrett knows it.

One day, the earth’s going to rock beneath his feet and he’s going to miss the thrust, the parry, the pommel blow. And Garrett, Carver knows, will mock him for it. As if he isn’t just a little bit busy.

*

Two more months pass and they’re at eight—only four months shy of their first year in Kirkwall. Carver can’t remember the last time they stayed in _any_ city long enough for people to learn their names, a wink or a nod or a _Hawke_ when they pass by. He’s never had a routine to call _his_ , either; his earliest memory is still of sitting crammed in the back of a wagon with _Bethany_ , wishing she’d stop crying so he could just fall asleep.

But he’s coming up on his nineteenth birthday—a fact he’s all too willing to bury under the crook of his elbow at night—and he won’t be spending it in the cramped hull of a ship, or hidden in a merchant’s caravan, or out back in somebody’s barn, keeping quiet so there isn’t any trouble.

He’s getting too old for birthdays.

If he keeps his head down, they’ll get through it. That’s how it was in the Fereldan army, and Carver knows he was a good soldier, despite what Aveline says.

The strategy worked straight up until Ostagar, anyway. An army of maundering darkspawn has a habit of putting all the best-laid plans six feet deep in the mud. That was where the king ended up, _and_ most of the Grey Wardens.

There’s always _something_ —an ogre that moves too swift for its size, a signal fire that goes unanswered—that passes through Carver’s hands, beyond Carver’s control. And he can’t do anything but wait for it to strike, the same way he waited breathless in the wind and rain for a flanking charge that never came.

No one’s declared war in Kirkwall, but the stakes have never felt so high.

*

The Red Irons don’t like Garrett. Carver knows it—saw it coming like a mabari charge on the horizon.

His brother spoils their profit margins by refusing to steal from Meeran, and his bare shoulders ruin their chances with the taproom ladies. They like Garrett best, despite or because of the red blood smeared across the bridge of his nose—a joke he won’t drop, not after Gav complained the mages always stayed too clean.

They aren’t like Carver, who’s had years to learn about living in Garrett’s shadow. And _Garrett_ doesn’t understand that soldiers and sellswords appreciate a spoilsport about as much as they do a show-off.

‘Thinks he’s _better_ than us,’ one of the men mutters, a dark-haired fellow with a fat lump of flesh where his left ear should be. ‘We’ll show him soon enough.’

Garrett gives too many people reason to love him. And that’s why they hate him so much.

Carver grips his sword too tight while pressure pops in a split knuckle. Living with apostates means he’s always waiting for something: the next templar to knock at their door, or Uncle Gamlen realizing there’s a reward for sending mages to the Gallows.

This idiot’s just another in a long line of mercenaries looking to get one up on Garrett Hawke—but Carver’s the one who chose this life, and it’s on him if anything happens before their year is up.

*

It’s bound to happen someday. That’s the law of averages—or the law of _bad luck_.

They fight that morning over the breakfast; it doesn’t matter why. The sugar in Garrett’s tea or the way Carver drinks his milk—the last piece of stale bread or just a look across the table, someone saying _what_ , someone else kicking out at a shin or a knee.

Carver only remembers the tone of Garrett’s voice, scolding, like he thinks he has the right—‘Mind your table manners, Carver, _really_ ; even the dog knows better than you’—and Carver leaves for a long walk through the short hexes, where Lady Elegant doesn’t bother to wave when his _brother’s_ not by his side.

There’s a job that night, but Carver finds himself elbow-deep in spider silk and spider slime, hacking his way through one of Kirkwall’s many infestations, and when he gets to the rendezvous point Garrett’s there but the mark’s not, job finished because it never started, all the money gone.

Garrett leans against a slick brown wall, tossing a fireball from hand to hand. The fire never comes close to singing his beard, but his face looks like Father’s next to the campfire, whenever he refused to tell one of the old stories about his time in the City of Chains.

 _Good of you to finally join us,_ Carver thinks, halfway between Garrett’s voice and Father’s, like he’s late for supper and made Mother worry and the only punishment is silence, one that lasts all night.

But this time Meeran’s waiting for them up-city, out of the sewers and in the shit-smog of Lowtown, and Meeran’s boys— _boys_ , they call themselves, so they never have to be _men_ —and Garrett snuffs his fireball with a grin that brings shadows to light.

‘Better let me be the one to break the bad news to Meeran,’ he says, instead of anything else. ‘ _I_ always wonder what a man like him wants with so many Orlesian letters, anyway. It’s not like he can read them.’

*

He gets Meeran good and drunk before he tells him anything; they’re laughing fast and loose about the good old days Garrett’s never even seen, while Carver hunches over his tankard and tries not to vomit from the stink. The taste’s worse than ash on the air in Lothering, or the spatter of blood on his lips, spray from another soldier’s death-wound.

‘Have to piss,’ Garrett says, wobbling, and bumps into Meeran on his way out.

Meeran claps Carver on the shoulder with a warm, rough palm, stained with smoke and grease, just before he follows Garrett to the taproom’s back-door.

Carver waits for them in the sweaty crowd, each stale belch no more annoying than each fresh riot of laughter, from too many people who aren’t happy thinking it doesn’t matter if they just pretend to be. Rivaini raiders toast their latest kill and a tap-wench expects compensation for her efforts, and someone in one of the rooms upstairs is shouting over it all, breaking furniture, while the fire in the hearth stains the cloth under Carver’s arms heavy with perspiration.

It’s been too long. Carver’s the only man alive in this part of the city who isn’t drunk, and his brother’s out in a back alley with Meeran, paying by the handful for all of Carver’s _little_ mistakes.

*

Carver only catches the end of it, cool dockside air hitting his face as he steps out back. They’re almost done, but he hears Meeran’s soft grunts and the scrape of his leathers against the alley wall; he sees the shape of Garrett’s shoulders when he bows his head, crooked elbow bent at the right angle to get his hand beneath another man’s smalls.

Meeran’s too drunk to know Carver’s there and hiding in the shadows, but when the man’s gone and Garrett pushes his other hand through his hair, Carver realizes he was never drunk at all.

‘It’s not the first time I’ve done it,’ Garrett says with a shrug, and Carver wonders when it’s ever going to be the last.

 **END**


End file.
